Quantifying the impact of recent disease outbreak of zoonotic nature in small-scale dairy farmers in Wayanad, Kerala, India.

The recent outbreaks of zoonotic nature have resulted in a rigours impact on the economies of many countries. The livestock sector is one of the major sub-sector in Indian agriculture. As a by-product of the lockdown imposed by the government due to the emergence of recent zoonosis (COVID- 19), dairy farmers have faced many issues with the sales of milk, availability of fodder etc. A cross-sectional study was carried out using a well-structured questionnaire circulated among the participants (n = 382) to understand the socioeconomic conditions and the costs and expenses incurred by the farmers using the Total Cost (TC) - Total Revenue (TR) approach to estimate economic loss incurred by dairy farmers in Wayanad District, Kerala. Economic loss was subsequently determined by comparing the total costs incurred by the farmers with their total revenue. Most of the farmers were female and every respondent belonged to socio-economic group of INR.8763 and above per month. A total loss of USD 109.6 was estimated per farmer, with TC accounting for USD 390.39 and TR accounting for USD 280.79, indicating that farmers are affected during the pandemic-imposed lockdown, similarly the pandemic-induced loss and farming experiences explained very less variation (R² = 0.02) and these variables were not associated (p = 0.349) with one another in the study area. This study provides an empirical outlook on loss of dairy farmers, advocates need for educating farmers on fodder management and disease preparedness in the district and pave further research to understand more dimensions and loss using the same framework.